Rising from the rubble of an old industrial site, the 20,000-seat Toyota Park was supposed to put a small suburb on the map.

Yet the soccer stadium also has become a model of what can go wrong when a littletown takes massive development gambles in a state with loose borrowing and ethics laws: Politicians and insiders benefit, while taxpayers are stuck covering budget-busting losses.

The blue-collar suburb of Bridgeview now suffers under the highest rate of debt in the Chicago region, a Tribune analysis of thousands of pages of state and local records found.

To help make its payments, the village has nearly tripled the Bridgeview property tax bill in less than a decade for the town's mostly modest ranch homes and plans to boost that burden far higher.

The hulking, red-brick Toyota Park rises impressively from the side of gritty Harlem Avenue, its canopies jutting into the sky. The village-owned stadium is not only home to the Chicago Fire, but also hosts major music shows.

And since opening in 2006, it has come up millions of dollars short of making its huge debt payments. The yearly shortfalls are sometimes as big as the town's annualpolice budget, and they've helped sink the southwest suburb's credit rating to among the Chicago area's worst.

Still, not everyone in town is losing.

The big borrowing created a torrent of cash that, in part, went to companies tied to high-level village employees, the town leaders' political supporters and even companies linked to the mayor's family.

Plus, campaign contributions from those profiting at the stadium have helped bankroll a rarely challenged local political machine that recently elevated its leader, Mayor Steven Landek, to the Illinois Senate. The machine also has put thousands of dollars in rent payments into the mayor's pocket each year.

Landek would not agree to an interview, but in emails, spokesman Ray Hanania blamed the economy for the stadium shortfallsand said nothing was done illegally or unethically. He chided the Tribune for questioning the project.

"Toyota Park has been the best thing to ever happen to Bridgeview. It's brought a new spirit and pride and regional attention," he said. "The Fire is a remarkable team, far better than the Tribune's properties. ..."

Good-government advocates, however, question years of deals involving the soccer stadium that appear rife with conflicts of interest, and financial experts blame the resulting losses on more than a bad economy. Among the critics is H. Woods Bowman, a former state lawmaker and county financial officer who now teaches government finance at DePaul University.

"It's hard to see how it could have turned out much worse than it did," Bowman said.

Bridgeview's story is a sobering reminder for taxpayers across the Chicago region, most of whom live in towns that have almost unlimited power to borrow and tax without voter approval. When ambitious venturesfall flat, generations of taxpayers may pay the price.

It startedfor Bridgeview residents with a seemingly innocuous vote for "home rule" in 2002 — a vote that many towns have taken. But in Bridgeview's case, that vote would lead to a trail of broken promises, risky gambles and sweetheart deals that helped put the town's 16,446 residents on the hook for more than $230 million.

The promise

The state constitution allows large towns to borrow at will. Small towns need residents' OK for each big project — or, they can get voters to approve "home rule" powers that include nearly unlimited borrowing authority, forever. Landek pushed for the latter in 2002, telling residents it would ensure a "stable future."

The stadium was not mentioned in the village newsletters then. Officials proposed a sales tax hike to ease property taxes. Voters agreed by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Butin the ensuing years, Landek and the Village Board began pursuing big buys in the name of economic development, including a struggling sports dome and an aging shopping center.

Behind much of the spending was the pursuit of the Chicago Fire.

The financially struggling Major League Soccer team wanted taxpayers, somewhere in the region, to help build it a stadium.

Researchers have long questioned whether stadiums are good investments for taxpayers. But that didn't stop proposals from Chicago and about a dozen suburbs.

None apparently matched Bridgeview's generosity or the tenacity of its mayor.

The pitch

Landek came armed with decades of experience as a wheeling-and-dealing power broker in business and politics.

Tall, bespectacled and affable, he had worked his way up through the local Democratic Party power structure, while owning a cleaning supplies company, investing in real estate and becoming an executive at the town bank. As he started his second mayoral term in 2003, Landekpitched a reinvention of his town and insisted taxpayers would feel no pain.

Village officials at first said the town would borrow up to $55 million to pay for most, but not all, of the stadium, and investors would assume much of the risk if the stadium didn't make money.

But then the town borrowed more than $100 million, to pay for the entire stadium, and put taxpayers directly on the hook if it didn't turn a profit. And turning a profit would be harder: The final deal called for much of the revenue from soccer games to go to the Chicago Fire.

While such deals can give taxpayers pause, lenders typically see such huge loans as having little risk. That's because state law allows even the smallest of towns with home-rule authority to promise lenders they will jack up taxes, if needed, to pay back loans.

Still, one outside group wasn't too impressed. Standard & Poor's rates how much towns can be trusted to repay loans, and it downgraded Bridgeview because of the deal's "extraordinarily high debt levels."

Landek wouldn't detail why the village chose to spend more and assume more risk. Via email, he said "fluid" negotiations led to a "cutting-edge private and public partnership."

Through it all, officials told residents not to worry.

Longtime trustee Michael Pticek told the Tribune that village-hired experts claimed in reports that, under a worst-case scenario, the town would break even: "We were shown different scenarios, and there was no way we would lose on this thing."

Landek was quoted in the Daily Southtown as calling it "ludicrous" to talk of a scenario in which property taxes would be raised to subsidize the stadium. "Four years of nothing, of the stadium sitting empty, is when we would have to consider raising taxes," he was quoted as saying.

Exactly how those projections were made is unclear. The town did provide the Tribune hundreds of pages of requested records, but for perhaps the most key document — financial studies proving the stadium could make enough money — Landek and the village attorney insisted no such reports existed.

Once Bridgeview started borrowing the cash, millions flowed to those who contribute to political funds controlled by town leaders.

The Tribune found that people and companies profiting from the stadium have given the mayor's campaign and related funds more than $170,000 since 2004.

The contributors included construction companies, lawyers, security firms and food vendors. They also included the financial team that made hundreds of thousands of dollars to consult on the stadium and assist the heavy borrowing.

One of the financial advisers, Daniel Denys, declined an interview but said in an email thathis firm's donations came "without any expectation of reciprocity."

The families of high-ranking employees got deals. The wives of retired fire chief Terrence Lipinski and current chief Anthony Butkus created a company that has been paid at least $788,000 to provide medical staff for stadium events. Butkus defended the wives' deal, saying that both are nurses and that stadium management shopped around before hiring them.

Even companies tied to the mayor's family benefited,selling more than $120,000 in janitorial and vending supplies to the village, with a third of it going to the stadium. Landek didn't directly answer questions about the companies, other than to say he himself has "no ownership interest" in them.

The mayor, however, does own a Summit commercial building and — through rent payments — has benefited from those getting stadium business.

Based at that building is CDK Accounting, which has done work for the village and stadium. Neither Landek nor the firm's owner would disclose how much rent CDK pays to Landek.

Another tenant in that building is the township political fund chaired by Landek. It has paid him rent for years, but state campaign records show it struggled to pay all the rent he sought — at least until the stadium was built. Then, stadium vendor donations rolled in and, through a complex series of transfers, tens of thousands ended up in the township fund, which then paid off much of the back rent. In all, the township fund paid Landek more than $150,000 since 1998.

State law sets few limits on local officials' relationships with contractors or political groups. The law:

•gives local officials wide discretion over who gets contracts, including to firms tied to relatives;

•allows contractors to make political donations to local officials who give contracts;

•allows village officials to receive income from village contractors or political groups.

Still, one good-government advocate, Dick Simpson, called various contracts and campaign donations in Bridgeview "one conflict of interest after another."

Simpson is a former Chicago alderman who now heads the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He said the insider deals in Bridgeview raise questions about whether stadium vendors could be overcharging taxpayers.

Even without ties to contracts, village leaders have benefited from the stadium, Bridgeview records show. They have gotten free use of a village executive suite — with free food and drinks — to see not only soccer games, but name acts such as Jimmy Buffett and Eric Clapton.

Village officials have also used the stadium to throw themselves campaign fundraisers, including an end-of-summer blowout picnic last year in Toyota Park's parking lot. Records show their political fund plunked down $10,000 for food, nearly $5,000 for beer and $3,500 for a mixed-martial arts show.

State law doesn't require the political group to say how much money was brought in from that specific fundraiser.But the group did report it paid the town $1,400 to rent the lot.

Big losses

The fundraiser was among a host of far higher-profile events, from packed rock concerts to Fire games, that have become fodder for town leaders' news releases while sending millions into village coffers.

Problem is, the town owes millions more on the debt.

Buried deep in Bridgeview's financial records are acknowledgments that the stadium has never made enough money to cover its loan payments.

Village officials say the stadium has come up about $11.5 million short of making its debt payments from opening day in 2006 to 2010. A Tribune analysis of the village's audited financial reports shows the shortfall could actually be more than double that amount, depending on which expenses and debt payments are attributed to Toyota Park.

To pay for the losses — at least in the short-term — the town borrowed even more, through a complex series of loans and cash transfers.

From the start, officials took out an extra $14 million to cover any shortfalls for a project they insisted would pay for itself. Then, as the stadium lost money, the town borrowed another $50 million in 2008, telling investors much of the newly borrowed cash would be used to cover other stadium debt. And then in 2011, officials borrowed another $22.5 million, setting aside more than half of it to cover old losses and future ones.

Today Bridgeview is suffocating under nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in debt.

All of it was borrowed in ways that require taxpayers to pay it back — even if the projects go south. The Tribune analyzed such "general obligation" loans for each Chicago-area town and compared them to property values, a common way to measure a town's debt load. Bridgeview leads the region, with 11 times the debt rateof the average town.

The debt spiral prompted S&P to downgrade Bridgeview's credit rating yet again in February. Now, the small suburb has a rating approaching junk status. Just six other Chicagoland towns are rated as bad or worse by S&P.

"If things don't get better, there is a good likelihood of another downgrade," analyst John Kenward said.

And Bowman, the DePaul finance professor, said: "At some point they're going to hit the wall, and then what do they do? That's where it gets murky."

A promise kept?

The Tribune called or left messages with every village trustee. Only two spoke with reporters. One, Claudette Struzik, said she thought the losses weren't yet a major concern. Another, Pticek, the finance committee chair, said he was sure the stadium would become profitable once the economy improved.

The village wouldn't provide the Tribune any study or detailed projections to support that optimism.

Records show the stadium lost money even before the recession began. It has lost money, year after year, despite often hitting broad benchmarks that were originally touted as a baseline for breaking even: a soccer team, four international soccer events and four concerts a year.

In a statement to the newspaper, Bridgeview officials broadly said the stadium's "collateral benefits have been obvious" and said "our long term prospects are bright."

But in its recent conversations with S&P, the village suggested it could raise property taxes by as much as $7 million by 2016 to help cover future stadium losses, according to the rating firm's report. That would be in addition to the $11 million Bridgeview got in property taxes last year.

Landek cautioned the Tribune that the proposal was only "one of several considered and discussed with S&P." He did not respond to a question about how much higher he expected homeowners' taxes to rise.

A Tribune analysis found the town used to charge the average homeowner among the least of all suburbs.But since the home rule vote, the average homeowner's tax bill for the villagemore than tripled — despite leaders promising taxes would be "frozen" for eight years with home rule.

Landek says leaders promised in 2002 only to freeze the tax rate, not the amount. That is a huge caveat because of how taxes are computed. A tax rate is multiplied by the property value to get the billed amount. As property values rose over much of the past decade, so did tax bills.

And when property values began dropping, Landek said, that's when the tax pledge expired. So the town was free to raise the tax rate, bringing in even more property-tax money from homes and businesses. Far from residents seeing property tax relief, the village share of the average homeowner's tax bill rose faster than those in almost every other Cook County suburb.

Residents may have a hard time spotting the trend. Deciphering tax bills can be tricky. Most of the total goes to schools, with the village among a dozen or so agencies getting a smaller slice. But when Marilyn Staniszewski recently dug through her bills, she said she was shocked to see the village's spikes.

Records show the Staniszewskis paid the town $291 in 2002, jumping to $449 in 2007, and $984 last year. She nervously awaits this year's final bill — likely to be higher still — and said the town clearly broke its tax pledge.

"This town could do so much better," she said. "Don't raise my taxes when everybody is still struggling."

Political capital

None of Bridgeview's woes was on the agenda for a special meeting last year at the stadium of some of the area's biggest political heavyweights.

Democrats were gathering to pick an appointee to replace retiring state Sen. Louis Viverito.

Presiding over the meeting was longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan, a South Sider who represents much of Bridgeview. He helped Mayor Landek lobby the Fire to come to the south suburbs and joined Landek at one of the first games as the pair stood in the middle of the field, greeting Fire players in front of the home crowd.

Now, Madigan took a quick vote of local party leaders and announced Landek the new senator.

He became senator over parts of more than a half-dozen suburbs, vowing to do for the region what he had done for Bridgeview. With the new role came a $67,000-a-year-paycheck on top of his $39,000-a-year job as Bridgeview mayor.

Within hours of his appointment, a news release was issued to help persuade voters to send him back to Springfield this fall.

There was no mention of Bridgeview's massive debt for the stadium, or the property tax hikes. Instead, the release touted Landek's role in building the stadium.

"Outside of Midway Airport," Landek is quoted as saying, "the Toyota Stadium is one of our region's most important landmarks."

Related documents Broken promise: Read a 2002 pitch town leaders made to voters for more power, and how it was broken. Failed projections: See how town leaders vowed the stadium wouldn't lose money. Heavy losses: Examine the town's latest audit, with explanations showing the stadium losing...

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